Decide the Course to Write

The first step is to decide what your course is going to be. There are several ways to go about this, but here are my two favorite ones-

• Go to the Clickbank Marketplace and see what products are trending or have most gravity. In the Clickbank marketplace, gravity represents how many individual affiliates have made sales of this product in the last 30 days. It’s an indicator of popularity
• Go to Udemy.com and see which programs have the largest number of ratings

Now that you have an idea of which programs are the most popular you get an idea of what markets have the most potential in terms of sales and revenue. Logically the next step would be to come up with a list of ideas for the theme of your product that walks familiar lines to the most popular products, while not being the same. That means coming up with a new angle on a popular topic.

As an example, if you want to make a course about weight loss (not that I’m recommending you to), and you see most courses target older women, maybe you could come up with one who specifically targets women who’ve been recently pregnant, or maybe targeting men. In the case of the screenshot above, you see the most popular weight loss product at the moment seems to be one with the angle of helping readers to get a flat belly. Maybe you can make one focused on getting rid of the love handles. See what I mean?

Obviously, you should always try to decide how you can add the most value. If you’re a Yoga expert, don’t write a Pilates course just because it sounds better or you think there’s more money in it.

Now the real trick is this: while it’s easier to sell courses as a one-time transaction, it’s usually much more profitable if you can turn your course into something where you can deliver periodically updated content to your audience, to get them engaged in a monthly subscription. Monthly subscriptions are usually incredibly more profitable and can extend the life of a course for years and years, that otherwise would be dead a few months after release. So make sure you consider if your course is something whose value can be extended by delivering updated content to your users at least every month. If so that is definitely the way to go.

Picking Where to Publish

As a general recommendation, since most platforms where you can publish your course are not exclusive, you should just publish it in the most platforms you can as to achieve maximum exposure but FOCUS on the one with the highest potential for automated sales. Meaning, I tend to focus on the platforms that are the easiest to drive their own traffic or attract affiliate partners to your product.

In the digital product space, affiliates are the name of the game, therefore affiliate friendly platforms such as Clickbank or Jvzoo (more focused on Internet Marketing products) are the ones that I would recommend making the main hub for your sales. There are however countless other platforms where you can and should post your course after it’s ready, and the majority will just ask that you have a separate landing page for each of them, which is pretty easy as you can just clone your main landing page and put it on another domain or subpage.

A good suggestion and a strategy that I’ve used before is to conceptualize and write the course in a way where it can be used both as an ebook and later converted to Video, because let’s face it: most people nowadays will prefer Video courses every time over Ebooks if given the choice.

Then we’re going to publish the product as a Video course on Clickbank, as well as Udemy (under a different name), and also use the written version to compile it as an Ebook and publish it on Amazon KDP which is their self-publishing platform, again under another name. The reason for this is that Clickbank allows for the most scale since you can use it to attract hundreds of affiliates, that sell your product for you, without you having to do anything, while both Udemy and Amazon will generate sales for you on Autopilot without you having to do much marketing.

As I said, once you finish creating your course, you can and should publish it into as many platforms as possible to maximize exposure, as long as they don’t make you sign an exclusivity agreement.

Turning Your Document into a Video Course and Beautiful Ebook

After you have written your program it’s time to turn it into a video course or an Ebook. If you are a good speaker and presenter you can film yourself delivering the course. This is great if you’re on a budget because I guess you can just do it with your phone and thus spend pretty much zero money recording the whole course. I assume most people will prefer not to. I’ll also assume you don’t have any graphic design or video skills, but don’t sweat it. It’s very easy to hire a few freelancers to turn your written course into a Video course, or a really nice looking Ebook.

I have two suggestions for this. You either use Fiverr or Upwork.

Fiverr is a marketplace where various services are offered, mostly B2B. It started as an everything for $5 website, but it evolved into something else and now you can find services for very different prices. Even though it’s not $5 anymore, you still can often find really good deals on Fiverr. We have written about Fiverr more extensively in this article.

Upwork is the biggest marketplace in the World for freelancers. You’ll find freelancers of all skill levels, and prices there. The way it works is that you open a job that you need to be done, and then you’ll have freelancers apply for your job. Vetting is really essential, so I recommend that you leave your job open for 3-5 days to maximize freelancer applications, and then review each freelancer’s work history and reviews, and shortlist 3 or 4 candidates to interview. Unlike Fiverr, on Upwork you may exchange contact information with the freelancers, so it’s always advisable to get freelancers on Skype for a 1-on-1 interview to be sure he is the right person, to negotiate the price, before you choose one to award the job to.

Regardless of whether you choose Fiverr or Upwork, you should have your content well organized in modules and submodules before handing it to freelancers. After that, the process should be something like:

1- Find a voice over artist to voice your content. These can be very expensive, but you’ll often will be able to find semi-professional voice over artists, that will do a great job for a fraction of the price. I recommend that you don’t pay more than $50 for each 1000 words of voice-over, more like in the $20-$30 range is acceptable.

2- After you have your voice over files back from the artist, it’s time to get a video editor to turn your content and voice and mash them into whiteboard videos for each submodule such as the one below.

This is really the standard when it comes to delivering information in the form of videos.

3 – Get a graphic designer to design a cover for your product and then create a box mockup such as the one below. This can be done by using Photoshop actions (mention this to the designer and he will know what you’re talking about if he’s any good) and will be the customer facing image of your product.

4- Now ask the same graphic designer to design the inside pages of the ebook in the same style and color scheme of the cover to maintain consistency and for your ebook to look professional.

There you have it. At the end of this process, you should have a bunch of video files organized in folders, each representing a different module. A beautiful box image and ebook. The cover should also be adapted to be your logo in case you might need one later.

Creating Video Sales Letter

Courses are mostly sold through Videos at the moment, usually what in the marketing world we call Video Sales Letters. Videos are said to be able to increase conversions up to 85% compared to landing pages with just text.

With the popularity of Youtube, everyone is used to getting their information in the form of video rather than reading.

Video sales letters are in fact the most important piece of it all. Your course will likely not sell due to the quality of the information inside, it will not sell based on the pretty graphics you design for the cover or the website… no. I’d say 95% of what makes products successful are down to the ability of the VSL to hit home with your target audience and convince your prospective customers that you have exactly what they need.

Video sales letters are also an art form in themselves, and usually very expensive to get made professionally. A professional VSL copywriter will probably set you back at least $20,000 and more likely $50,000, and you really have no guarantee how well they will perform. Therefore when it comes to writing the VSL, I always recommend DIY because your knowledge of the product will often make it up and have your VSL perform as well if not better than if it was written by a Pro copywriter with little knowledge.

In order to model your video from other already proven videos, you’re going to have to study videos that are being very successful in selling products that are not easy to sell: Look for the top performing products in the Clickbank and Jvzoo marketplaces. My recommendation is to spend at least one week deconstructing several successful video sales letter in your target market, systematize them and then create your own version of it.

This is how these guys usually outline their videos:

#1 – “Pattern Interrupt”

You might also call this the “Hook.” The purpose of your very first couple of slides is to GRAB your viewers attention immediately.

I’ve used many different types of HOOKS. Here’s a few:

• They LIED to you ‘hook’ – This one’s obvious, but it often works pretty well. Basically, it’s creating an “us” (including your viewer) versus “them” (anyone outside the video).
• Nail ’em with BIG results immediately – This hook is leveraging another element in the 12-step formula… Results. See, it’s okay to use results in the beginning if it makes a good hook. You’ll use them again later too. Example: “Check this out… Just last week I grew my list from 341 to over 2,388 {screenshot proof} in only 7 days and I’m about to show you exactly how I did it and how you can to…”
• If I told you… ‘hook’ – You know this one right? “If I told you that you could make an extra $1,000 per month working only 20 extra minutes per day, wouldn’t you want to know how?”

#2 Identify Problem and Hit Pain points

Now that you’ve got their attention, it’s time to get down to business.

In many cases, if you’ve done a good job with your HOOK, the transition into identifying the problem is seamless. This is the part where you’re supposed to “TWIST the KNIFE”

The best way to do this is to tell a quick story of what happened to you, that the customer can identify with, feel the same pain.

#3 – Provide the Solution

Now, once you’ve dug the “knife in” a little deeper and shared more about why the problem is happening, what it really is, and how it’s hurting their business. This is the part where you show your product or course that you’re selling. (hence, solving the problem)

A cool looking e-cover graphic or physical photo of your product is perfect for this slide.

#4 – Features and Benefits

Now, you’re going to showcase your product and show them why it’s the best thing since sliced bread, super easy to use and how it’s going to solve their current problems.

Make this almost seemingly too good to be true and you will create an “aha” moment in your target audience and make your audience want to buy what you sell. It’s very important not to bore your viewer at this point.

If you’re talking about the “algebraic formula that creates the algorithm for your software to work” you’re probably off-track.

Keep it interesting and place yourself in your potential customer’s shoes. What do they REALLY want? You don’t need to show your product A-Z, but instead focus on what solves your customer’s pain points and delivers them to the promised land.

#5 – Call to Action (CTA)

Now, that they know what you’re offering them to solve their problem, it’s time to ASK them to take action. Purchase your product, sign up to your free trial, whatever you are looking for.

At this point you can also insert your refund guarantee if you have one, to take away the feeling of risk the customer may still have.

This is just a simple representation of what comprises a Video Sales Letter. For further study I recommend checking out John Benson’s work. He is probably the greatest authority when it comes to VSLs in the Internet Marketing space, having hit 8 figure product home runs multiple times with his VSLs.

Be sure to study the video sales letter below. It’s one of the best selling weight loss courses of all time, called Venus Factor.

Creating a Sales Page and Membership Area

The next step into launching your course is to create a simple landing page to host your Sales Video and your Membership content

I won’t go into depths about how to buy a domain, hosting a website, etc, as you can probably already know, or can find that information in more relevant websites, but I’ll suggest a few options on how to setup your site’s membership area.

There are many options for this but I’ll cover 3 of the most popular ones:

1- Using WordPress with the Optimizepress theme and its free membership plugin OptimizeMember. This is probably the cheapest option since WordPress is free and Optimizepress is a one time purchase and comes with a membership plugin included that integrates seamlessly with Optimizepress. Optimizepress is what I consider the easiest to use WordPress theme for landing page creation. You require no technical skills to set it up and it will allow you to create great looking landing pages and member areas in minutes. You can check out their landing page here (which was actually designed with Optimizepress as well. I use it for many types of sites, because it’s inexpensive and very flexible.

It’s also very widely used so in case you need guidance I’m sure you can find many tutorials on setting it up on Youtube, as well as OptimizeMember, the membership plugin that comes with it.

2 – The second option I recommend is Clickfunnels. Clickfunnels can be quite expensive but the major benefit is that it’s completely idiot-proof, which means, even someone just starting out with zero technical background can get a good looking landing page and a simple membership area up in under an hour. They even have a lot of templates which means that you can just use something already done, and just put your logo on it and you’re ready to go. Another good thing with Clickfunnels is that not only they host your site, meaning you don’t need a hosting company, but you can also run your entire backend on Clickfunnels, enabling you to do tasks like sending newsletters to your users through their system. In short, while they can be quite costly, they save you money because they allow you to save money that you’d otherwise spend elsewhere.

3 – Option 3 is Kajabi. Kajabi is a Clickfunnels alternative that has actually been around longer. I believe it was one of the first platforms to offer ready-made membership site templates. It’s still used by a lot of oldschool marketers.

The last thing you need is a solution to host your videos. You could host them on your own server but that is not something generally recommended as they spend a lot of web traffic which in most hosting providers means you’ll be paying extra for that traffic. If you are totally broke you can put your videos as Unlisted on Youtube, which I did when I was just starting out as I had zero funds. The problem with this is that anyone can share the link which is not nice. My recommended solution is to get a Vimeo pro subscription. It costs less than $20 a month and pretty much allows for unlimited videos to be uploaded there for all your businesses, courses, etc. It’s something I’ve used for years and still use today.

Gathering Affiliates

Affiliates are the heartbeat of most successful digital courses. They are the digital distributors of your course, commission salesmen who will go to any lengths to make your product be known across the web and be seen by your target audience. A single affiliate can bring you 1000s of sales with zero effort and spend from your side. Just from that figure alone, you see how important it is to recruit affiliates, and why you should be completely focused on recruiting affiliates rather than recruiting customers.

Now because affiliates are basically promoting your product without being paid anything until they make a sale, the commissions tend to be pretty high, usually at a minimum of 70% for one time purchases and 50% for recurring billing products such as membership areas that deliver monthly updated content.

Make an Affiliate Page

The first step to gathering affiliates is to make an affiliate page that looks at least as good as the main Landing page for your customers. Affiliate pages are where you will pitch your product to affiliates and try to convince them why it’s a good idea to promote your product over other products. Please remember that affiliates have thousands of products to choose from, so why should they choose yours? You need to make a convincing argument as to why your product is the best in the market, how you have more credentials than your competitors, and in the end, how they are likely to make more money promoting your product than something else.

The affiliate page should also be the place where your affiliates can find resources to help them promote your products. There are a few things that should be in every affiliate page:

• Pre-made banners (you can get your graphic designer to design these for you. Usually a full banner set with the most popular sizes will set you back around $100)
• Pre-written emails and blog posts (since affiliates tend to be known as lazy, it’s always a good idea to have a promotional email sequence for affiliates with email lists, as well as some pre-written blog posts for affiliates with blogs. These should be a mix of promotional content about your product, samples of what customers can find inside, as well as reviews)
• A usable full size image of your product box and logo
• The Affiliate Link so they can easily jut copy/paste it and start promoting your product immediately.

It’s also a very good idea to record a short video of yourself introducing your product to the affiliates. I see a lot of successful vendors that have used this strategy to create a more personal approach to affiliates, get them to know you and care about you and your cause.

Again, in order to build your own affiliate page, there’s nothing like modeling the ones from already successful products. You’ll usually find the affiliate pages of products in the Marketplace listings of Clickbank and Jvzoo. I really recommend that you go through a handful of them, see what are the most common elements they include.

Affiliate Outreach

Now if you’re wise getting affiliates is what you’ll spend most of your time doing after you have launched. Plain and simply, the 80/20 rule applies to affiliates. Meaning, 20% of your affiliates, will generate 80% of your sales if not more. The problem is that most affiliates worth having are not going to start promoting your product just out of the blue. These people typically run successful blogs, Youtube channels or other large social media accounts, and the fact is that they are already probably promoting other products that they have tested and are making them good money, so why should they switch to yours.

A lot of people will fail to tell you this, but there is not a bulletproof way to get affiliates. We are talking about human beings here, and usually when talking about affiliates, we are dealing with people are already successful and highly intelligent, which means they will probably have inflated egos and will be somewhat hard to get in touch with.

Prospecting for Affiliates

Assuming you have everything else done, including a really nice and professional looking affiliate page, your first hurdle to get affiliates will be actually getting in touch with them.

My suggestion is to have a VA make a spreadsheet with a list of the main sites, blogs, forums, and social media properties where your prospects may be hanging out at. Make sure to be very extensive so you don’t miss out any relevant web properties that may comprise your target audience.

Then rank the sites, blogs, forums by traffic (quickly check traffic stats with Similar web free chrome extension) and rank social media properties by number of fans, members, followers, etc.

Then make a list of any competing products and make a new spreadsheet containing links to properties with reviews of your competing products. 99% of those people writing reviews will also be professional affiliates and will probably also be interested in reviewing and promoting your product.

Those lists you just made represent all the properties that you’re going to hit to recruit affiliates. Each different propery represents one individual affiliate. I’m not going to lie to you, this is difficult work. You’re probably going to have 10% of the people that you contact answer back to you and maybe 2 or 3 out of 100 become your affiliates. But please remember that one good affiliate can bring you 1000s of sales so it’s absolutely worth it in the long run.

Getting in Touch with Possible Affiliates

Right so the next move is to write a really short but nice message telling them about yourself and your product, and why it may be a good fit for their audiences, and prompting them to check out your affiliate page.

Lastly you should end the message with two suggestions:

1 – Offer to send them a review copy of your product (free access), so they can review it to their audience if they think it can be valuable to them.

2 – Ask for their contact information, so you can reach out to them on Skype or through a call.

I cannot stress enough how important it is to try to build a relationship with your affiliates. Think of them as prized business partners. Treat them even better than customers, and they’ll bring you many, many customers.

With that said, since affiliates have so many products to promote and yours is probably not much different than what’s out there in the market, the only way to really differentiate yourself and win in this game is to create personal relationship with affiliates, so they can’t say no to promoting your offer over someone else’s.

So get them on Skype, offer them free value and privileges, offer to write content for them or anything you can do that may be useful to them. Do what it takes for them ,to promote your offer to their customer base and you’ll reap the rewards.

As I said, even though this is a difficult game especially if you’re poor at personal relationships, one single great affiliate, such as one the major Youtube channels or blogs dealing with a particular topic, can be worth $100k per year alone.